


kadiliman

by FabulousPotatoSister



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blindness, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Torture, Memory Loss, tbh i just went off on this, too many ocean metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 08:11:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17556605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulousPotatoSister/pseuds/FabulousPotatoSister
Summary: filipino, (n.) - darkness.





	kadiliman

**Author's Note:**

> hello again on another doctor who fic! wrote this based on a prompt from the doctor who writer’s discord!! I hope you enjoy!

You’re running.

Stumbling, rather. Fingertips reach out and grasp nothing. Arms outstretched, skin scraping against metal and tile. A cacophany of sounds - loud, booming footsteps. Hushed voices. Wailing. The sound of your feet as they pad against a wire floor. Growling and hissing and snapping. Your breathing - ragged, shallow, scared scared _scared_.

Your fingers feel against edges - a wall, a corner, a room. There is a droning, and you don’t know if that’s you or where ever you are.

You make out voices. Words. Capture, escape, detain. _Detain_. The word sends a chill down your spine. _Detain_. Where did they keep you?

Where are you? Where is she?

All of this, and you keep moving.

Blindly. _Why can’t I see, where has my vision gone, what did they do to me, what did they do to me_ \- all of this, and your heartbeat thrums in your ears. It’s an ocean. Crashing against half-formed thoughts and adrenaline. Eroding, creating fear with its jagged edges -

Jagged edges that pierce, and break skin, and draw -

Bang. A crash. A high pitched wail. The noise makes you jump, backwards, bare skin sinking into wire.

She taught you what that was. A sonic bomb.

They know.

Everything stills. You still. And you listen.

…

Nothing. Nothing except for the sound of ringing in your ears.

So you run.

And while you run, you know nothing. Nothing except for the fact that if you stop, they will find you, and they will do things to you. Things you must have forgotten. If you weren’t being chased, you might have laughed. A small act of mercy.

A few more steps and you feel yourself press into a wall. You move left, slowly, quietly. A wind blows through. A hiding place.

The footsteps get louder. And louder.

Booming. They’re looking for you.

…

You don’t breathe.

And then - they disappear. Fading into another kind of darkness.

You’re everything but calm right now. But your hands wander. Over your face, swollen, aching, bruised. Over your chest, heavy. Down your arms and onto your hands - you feel shallow cuts and punctures, and the tackiness of what must be blood.

Fuck. You have no vision and yet it is tinged red with a pain you’ve never felt before.

Your hands, fingers, press on. They wander to your legs, and your fingers dip into something fleshy and wet. It -

It hurts, and a noise escapes you. Another wound maybe, deeper, cleaner. Straight through skin, maybe muscle. Not like your thoughts, which swim in the ocean you’ve created. The waves still crash. There isn’t a shore.

You try to cling to what’s left of your memories, and your consciousness. You remember in flashes - home, then bright lights, then a burning on your wrists, and pain. White hot pain. Endless questions. Endless questions you’d never answer. For their sake.

_(For whose sake?)_

You can barely register the fact that you’re shaking. You’re trembling. You’ve never felt so small, so weak. You could be better.

_(You could never be better, not like this, not like -)_

Thump. Thump. Footsteps. Not as loud as the others.

But your instincts - marred by confusion - they kick in. The ocean roars. Adrenaline pumping through your veins. Not again, not again, you couldn’t get caught you would die if you did and then you’d never see her again -

_Her, with her curling blond hair and eyes that seemed to hold galaxies, and a smile that could light up cities, no **planets.**_

Would you ever see her again?

The ocean rips away the question from your hands. It leaves fear in its wake instead.

And then you hear screaming.

The sound makes your blood run cold.

It’s desperate, laced with sobs and begging for mercy.

It’s  _you_.

“Who’s there?” Your voice is hoarse. Ghastly. “Who’s there?!”

Nothing.

Your face is wet now, your eyes heavy, blinking away tears as they arrive. You want to breathe. Every breath feels like knives on your ribcage, dancing until they choose to strike. “Please, I don’t - I don’t want to go back there - ”

Your hands fall against the floor, grasping. You’re moving now. Trying to get away. Swimming in a bog.  _Away away away_!

Your ears pick up a gasp. Familiarity runs through your mind for a second, a sweet second.

And then you feel them, coming closer. You’re defenseless. They’d take you back, and then you’d be gone. Probably forever.

So when you feel hands on you, you scream again. It’s the only thing you can do. So you scream, you cry, you kick. You fight. You fight for her, and for them. Or maybe you fight for yourself. Or maybe, in this silence, you fight for no one at all.

Gentle arms wrap around you, but you kick. You feel your kicks land, on something, someone, but whoever they are they don’t make a sound. You twisted under their hands, still trying to get away, to get away because you were scared and so, so little - but they refused to let you go.

“Calm down, it’s me, it’s  _me_.”

So sudden. You know that voice.

It can’t be…

No, no, you must be dreaming. They must be tricking you. It has to be a joke, because there can’t be light in this endless darkness. You don’t deserve that.

“Shh, it’s me, it’s - ”

Right there, your hearing - or what’s left of it - gives out. No!

Suddenly, a whirring, buzzing noise, a familiar one, one you can’t deny has to be real, and then - oh, and then -

**Thump-thump, thump-thump.**

You’re drowning now, sinking underneath the waves, but the ocean - the ocean is still. Crystalline. And still - **thump-thump, thump-thump**. Steady, unyielding.

A heartbeat.

**Thump-thump.**

_Heartbeats._

That can’t be faked.

“You’re safe now, I’m so sorry it took me so long to get to you - ”

She -

“Doctor…?” You can barely manage it. It leaves your mouth a whisper.

“Yes,” she says, and it is her. The arms around you don’t feel like restraints anymore. They feel like home. “I’m sorry.”

Don’t be sorry, is what you want to say, but it doesn’t come out. She’s so quiet, and it’s not like her, and you want to apologize to her instead, but the words don’t leave your mouth, smothered behind swollen lips instead.

“You’re - real,” you mumble. Your fingers move, they wander, and then they grasp cloth. Her coat. She smells so nice, like tea and honey. “You’re real.”

“I’m real,” the Doctor says, soft, gentle. Waves on a shore, except she was the shore. Like sand between your toes. What was that feeling called again? Relief? “Hang tight, okay? We’re almost home.”

Home. The TARDIS. Home sounded good right now, but in her arms, you were probably already there.

Your hands bunch in her coat. Her breath, tickling your neck, your head against her chest. Yes, you were home now.

“Stay with me,” she says, “come on.”

As you slip away, and as the familiar wheezing and groaning fills your ears, you hold on to her voice - clear, bright, everything.

Like a beacon in the darkness.


End file.
